Cuba’s government pledges to reduce power outages

Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel affirmed that by the end of 2022, the country would begin to “overcome the current energy crisis,” which he attributed to U.S. sanctions against the island while dismissing internal protests against the situation, which he said were being exploited internally “by the enemies of the revolution.”

“This whole situation has been exploited by the enemies of the revolution to create discouragement and insecurity, to incite vandalism and cause unrest,” the president, who is also the first secretary of the ruling Communist Party, said over the weekend.

Díaz-Canel said the crisis situation “has nothing to do with hostile activities or a bad attitude on the part of the workers at the thermoelectric plant.”

“It has to do with the systematic damage caused by the blockade (by the United States), which has left the country without financing options for the maintenance, repairs, and new investments the sector needs. Therefore, today we have an accumulated process of technological deterioration that cannot be solved in a short time,” he said.

“We still have some difficult days ahead, but we will recover,” he said. The president, who spent days in August visiting key power generation centers in the country, said a strategy announced for the summer to mitigate blackouts has “gone down the drain,” according to local press reports.

“This strategy failed with the accident in the boiler of Felton 2, the bearing rupture in Felton 1 and the instability of the CTE Antonio Guiteras in Matanzas, as we were not able to carry out the thorough maintenance required,” he said of unforeseen situations in key national power generation centers.

As a result of these problems, “a strategy was updated with three basic objectives: First, to eliminate the blackout as soon as possible, to minimize it, and we intend to achieve this before the end of this year.”

He added, as published by Granma, that “a second objective is to develop in 2023 a group of investments and maintenance that will give stability and strengthen the system. And a third point is the modification of the energy matrix” announced two months ago, which is part of all the measures and new investments.

Regarding the protests, he said that the situation “has been exploited by the revolution’s enemies to create discouragement and insecurity, to incite vandalism and cause unrest.”

“I separate this behavior from the doubts that the people have at a given moment, from their demands or concerns channeled through the attention systems that we have in the party, in the government, and the institutions of the revolution,” he said.